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Those of us who work for nonprofits know collaboration is important, yet sometimes it?s the most challenging part of our jobs. This can be especially true when you?re doing public relations for a nonprofit. If the nonprofit even has a PR department, it?s usually only a one or two-person shop with many other responsibilities.

Dominion GardenFest of Lights at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is a favorite holiday tradition for thousands of people. With more than half-a-million lights, model trains and botanical decorations, it?s a highly visual, family-friendly event. This makes it a good fit for the photo-sharing social media platform Instagram.

An Instagram contest engages people and it can provide great user generated content (UGC). The Garden incorporated photos from last year?s contest for the cover for this year?s newsletter and rack card.

The Garden?s public relations coordinator Jonah Holland offers the following additional tips for Instagram contests:

Partner with other nonprofits for prizes, tag them and cross promote on social media.

Choose a short and memorable hashtag; make sure it?s not already being used!

Make sure you have a rules page with a disclaimer allowing use of images for promotional purposes. Link to it often.

Use #Instagram and #Contest hashtags to promote the contest itself via an Instagram photo or ?postcard.?

Promote the contest through event signage.

If your organization is not on Instagram, you could do a similar contest on Facebook.